It is a long-circulating claim that the Pripyat residents and policemen who watched the Chernobyl explosion from a railway bridge, mostly (or even all) died. Sometimes even a dose of 500 rem (which is usually fatal with ARS, not only by some later cancer) is quoted. It made into the recent miniseries, which is not a hitorical source, not even a documentary, but is renowned for historical accuracy, and when it takes liberties (like the character of Komjuk, it admits it in the epilogue, exactly where the death bridge claim is sounded)
Truthorfiction claims that their fate is unknown, but that the story is unlikely, since people survived with hospitalization even in the control room or among the firefighters, even though they were much closer to the reactor, than the unlucky spectators.
However, it is not very convincing: The people in the control room had many concrete walls between them and the reactor, and the pieces and ashes of the core did not fall on their heads. Most of them would have survived, had they not made heroic efforts to contain the damage and rescue fellow workers. But I do not find it impossible that people geometrically farther, but by evil winds reciving the bulk of the fallout, would have fared way worse
The Truthorfiction page on the question only generally quotes sources about how "the exact death toll is unknown", but only mentions the circumstantial evidence of "they were farther than proven survivors", which as said above, seems whacky.
I have found however an interview with Pripyat evacuees: It seems that these persons at the bridge had not developed ARS, but had later (and sometimes fatal) health problems which they attributed to the disaster. So not everybody died (as Guardian had found people to interview), and the dose should have been lower than 500 rem
Is there documentation somewhere, that Truthorfiction might have overlooked, that would shed light on the
number of people on the bridge
The percentage of them who actually got acute radiation syndrome (ie radiation poisoning/burns)
The percentage of them who later died of long term effects?